


your skin and bones turn into something beautiful

by BelieveMePlease



Category: Rugby RPF, Rugby Union RPF
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, canon typical homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-20 21:39:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18533674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BelieveMePlease/pseuds/BelieveMePlease
Summary: The words are still singed behind his eyes -hell, repent. He squeezes them shut. Sins.*Response to Israel Folau saying for a second time that gay people will go to hell.





	your skin and bones turn into something beautiful

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Coldplay’s Yellow

It’s their last night together for a few days when it happens. They’re supposed to be immersed in personal serenity, wrapped up in nothing but each other, no care, no worries. It doesn’t matter that over the next few days Leicester are facing relegation in Newcastle, that Sarries have their own important game in Bristol to prep for; this is time supposed to be spent as just them.

George is tucked in against Owen, the join beneath his arm between his chest and shoulder providing a familiarity and comfort. The soft rise and fall in synchronisation with the effort of Owen’s  lungs is lulling, assuring. His heartbeat can be heard in the gentle press of George’s ear, just a little too offset to be anything but faint, but it’s all inspiriting. Unarguably evidential of the life with which George needs to be certain is contented and enduring. 

An arm falls from the back of the sofa, settles eagerly around George’s shoulder to draw him in before sliding down the stretch of his side, pausing at his hip to squeeze. The inquisition doesn’t avail until a hand is holding George’s arse firmly, finally satisfied in its position. George can’t help the small, warm smile he feels spread over his lips. The action is strangely without intent or purpose, unintended for the venereal initiation it so often is. They’re simply in each other’s space, intimately but not carnally. Owen sighs from above him, nothing if not calm, contented. 

The thought isn’t exactly pragmatic, beyond unrealistic, but George can’t help feeling that he could stay like this forever. He couldn’t, they have lives to live and a sport to play in an often painfully separated way, but it’s a thought George has let himself have more than once, will keep letting himself have. 

Sometimes it doesn’t feel enough that they live together -only as much as they can. Owen spends most of his week down in his London apartment, the commute proving just too much for training everyday. Both of them spend their weekends in whichever town or city their matches are in, only together when they’re playing each other but even then hardened professionalism forces them apart. 

Sometimes it doesn’t feel enough that they can be out and open. So often they’re not. The world may know, as much of it that gives the time to care, but still they remain cautiously private. They’d been too young when they were first together, too naive to the cruelness of some segments of society to ever cover the longer than friendly cuddles, the fleeting kisses, the tender interlocking of their fingers. George doesn’t regret it for a second, but they’re not those same children anymore, they’re far more sunken away into their own private sphere to do much more than hold hands as they walk their dogs in countryside too remote to be noticed. 

George shifts, closes his eyes as he burrows further into the human mattress beneath him suddenly feeling offset, as though something somewhere has caused a detriment in their peace, has caused him to disrupt it with his own wondering. 

“Fucking hell!” George was right and he startles as Owen’s discontent jostles him. He hums a quiet whine of complaint, Owen moving his hand upwards slightly to rub a soft, apologetic circle on his lower back in response. 

“What’s wrong?” George asks slowly, not quite having realised his drowsiness before now, coughing loose the tight croak that has formed in his throat from his silence. 

“Check the comments on your latest instagram, someone will have left a link,” Owen grumbles tersely, clearly agitated. George’s brow draws in with concern as Owen dips his own fingers back down, fishes George’s phone out of his back pocket for him. It’s odd for Owen not to tell him outright, to tell him to see for himself, worrying even. 

Owen unlocks the phone with his own fingerprint, opens up the Instagram app, even flicks onto George’s latest post before finally handing it to him. There is a link, a few actually, which all look like identical URLs, but more intriguingly is the multitude of messages of what appears to be support. Some of them are phrased in ways he sometimes sees when he posts a photo with Owen, some of his queer following telling him to ignore hate, telling him to be strong. The post is nothing to do with Owen, though, it’s nothing more than a generic teaser of excitement towards Leicester’s upcoming match. Confused, he presses one of the commented links. 

When the first thing he sees is Israel Folau’s username, George groans. This can’t be good. Owen’s hand moves back to his waist, draws him in once again. Looking at his phone with his head and neck pushed into such an angle isn’t the most comfortable, but with the foreboding that just this name brings George knows it’s a preemptive consolation he needs. He scrolls down the short ways until the picture becomes visible. 

The dark image is all a bit of a blur to George’s eyes, seeing little more than the few lexical items he automatically hones in on. The amalgamation of ‘homosexuals’, ‘hell’ and ‘sins’ are enough to draw him to what he can only presume are perfectly warranted conclusions, however, and suddenly everything stings. The phone held in his hands stings, his heart stings, his eyes sting, Owen’s hand rubbing against his hip stings. George feels his fingers shake, he can’t stop looking. 

“Georgie?” It takes George a second to realise that it’s not the first time Owen has said his name, has tried to snap him out of a daze he hadn’t realised was consuming him. Again, it’s happened again, they’ve let it happen again. “Georgie, you okay?” 

“Yeah,” George grunts, although he can’t help feeling that he’s lying, knows he wouldn’t be fooling anyone at this point, especially Owen. “No,” he corrects with a defeated sigh. “How can this happen again?” 

The first time around, neither of them really took it that seriously, nowhere near as seriously as they probably should have. It’s not that it wasn’t disgusting, isn’t still -it is. They talked about it endlessly, but they never addressed it, never responded to the endless torrents of media dragging their names up like a mantra simply because of who they are and who they love. At the time, ignoring it had felt like the right thing to do, it had felt like they had or should have had nothing to do with it. That feels now like it may have been a mistake. 

“It was always going to happen again,” Owen grumbles miserably, still petting George insistently as he keeps on scrolling through the media on his own phone, expression pinched. “He’s an idiot and he’s shot himself in the foot yet again.”

“Do you think anything will be different now?” George asks as hopefully as he can manage to muster. The words are still singed behind his eyes -hell, repent. He squeezes them shut. Sins. 

“Probably not,” Owen sighs. George thinks he can tell that he’s struggling, appreciates the soft kiss left on the crown of his head in support. He presses impossibly closer again, attempts to show his own in silent response. “No one would drop him with a World Cup coming up, he’s too fucking good, doesn’t matter if they’ve warned him about this before or not.”

“Eddie would drop him,” George quietly insists. He does believe that, has to believe that. 

“Eddie has us to force him,” Owen retaliates. George can here the indignation, the pessimism so typical of Owen. “If we weren’t out, or weren’t together or whatever -like no one is in Aus- then I’m not so sure.” 

It’s not derogatory towards Eddie, George knows that, it’s not meant as a slander on his character. That’s just a sad truth. George feels protected with Owen as a shield, and as much as words like Folau’s might cut through his skin to his bones he can barley imagine how much worse it would be if he was just a scared kid out there on his own. The thought causes him to jolt -how many terrified, queer kids have just seen that post? How many vexatious bullies have seen it, will now jump on it like a scapegoat? He shudders.

“We should have said something,” George confesses the thought that has been plaguing him. They should have done, there’s every chance they could have stopped this, could have made Folau’s punishment worse, could have frightened him out of speaking up again. This is their fault. “If we had this might not have happened.”

“Of course it would have, George,” Owen sighs, and George can practically hear the eye roll. Abruptly, he sits. Owen frowns at his sudden retraction, tries to hold his hand out to pull George close again, but the younger is having none of it. Cautiously, Owen goes on. “Seriously, he’s an idiot, he’s going to say whatever he wants no matter the response he gets. I mean, he literally said he’d walk away from rugby for his religion, I don’t think a couple of gay English players making a fuss would’ve made any difference to him.” 

“It could have, though -it might,” George whines, rejecting Owen’s hand once again as it tries to wind its way into George’s own. “This is- kids have had to read this, Owen, twice now. Don’t you remember what that felt like? And don’t you remember how good it felt when Gareth Thomas came out, how much hope it gave us with him being so open publicly?” 

“But we are out, we give as much hope as we can and we always have. We’ve never hidden anything,” Owen argues, “because we’ve never wanted or needed to. They dragged our names up enough without us saying anything, though, babe, how bad do you think it would’ve been if we had? I don’t want all that intrusion on us.” 

“It’s not just about us,” George relents, lets his shoulders sag, allows a fully saddened defeat wash over him. He can’t help feeling responsible, even if it’s ridiculous, he can’t help feeling like they have a duty. “There’ll be other queer players who aren’t comfortable coming out having that fear made even worse by guys like him, and kids losing faith or interest in rugby because they don’t feel like they’re wanted in the sport. I hate feeling like we could have prevented this.” 

“We couldn’t have,” George lets Owen cover his knee with his hand this time, turns to look at him morbidly. “Nothing we could have said would’ve stopped him doing this, only the AUR actually punishing him could do that, which they still probably won’t, but-“ he rubs his thumb back and forth, flashes George a small smile. “We can say something now if you want to, if you think it will help.”

“Really?” George checks, this time the hopefulness unhindered. “You don’t think it will get us too much attention?” 

“Oh it will,” Owen even laughs lightly as he says it, rueful more than anything. “You know I’ll go through all of that if it’s what you want, though.” 

“I’m not going to make you do something you don’t want to do,” George backpedals, beginning to realise just how hard he may be pushing. “I want to say something, but I can leave you out of it. You don’t have to do it with me.”

“Yes I do,” Owen squints, pinches George’s thigh. “I’m not going to shove you out there to the wolves by yourself, G -if you want to do a press release or a post or a tweet, whatever, I’m going to do it with you. I want to do it with you. You shouldn’t feel like you have to, though, yeah? It’s not your responsibility, Georgie, you don’t have to feel guilty.”

George sways a little at the sentiment, at how well Owen can read him without him having to say a word. He allows himself to fall sideways, for his head to fall to Owen’s shoulder. He covers the hand on his leg, squeezes the fingers there. Owen’s support is so unwavering, so wholesome and yet coming so easily. George feels so meagre in his own. 

“I love you,” he says simply, suddenly. It’s all he can offer. 

Owen huffs a simple laugh, turns his palm beneath George so their fingers can intertwine. The sweat slick of their palms chafes together in the movement, but it’s nothing less than perfect. “I love you too, baby.” He kisses George’s head once again, near the exact same spot he had done so before as George revels in the warmth of the intimate endearment he hears less than frequently outside of sensuality. All he regrets is that he ever left this, that he ever pulled away, that he ever allowed Folau to make him retract from Owen, to disagree with him, even for a second. 

The guys at Leicester see the post before he does, Owen dropping his off at training in the morning, before making the long trip down to his own grounds, to a tirade of questions over their response to Folau. They’d agreed to address it, but they hadn’t done it yet, hadn’t wanted raw emotion to overcome eloquence. As the questioning persists it’s all he can do not to get irritated within his own confusion until Ben shoves his phone into his hands. 

It’s open on Owen’s own Instagram page, on a post from first thing this morning that George hadn’t yet seen the notification for. The picture makes him smile reflexively, ignoring the cooing that attracts from his team in favour of studying it in more detail. It’s a shot of them in their bed at home, the terrible lighting coming only from the flash of Owen’s camera where he’s plastered up against George’s back, holding him tightly as his extended arm snaps the photo. His face is tucked into the join between George’s neck and shoulder and George’s eyes are closed where his face is smushed into the pillow. He can’t even remember when it was taken and it’s a total mess of any kind of decent photograph, but it floods him with a warmth that had been lost to him in the events of last night. 

The caption beneath is a simple red love heart and pride flag, and George guesses Owen hadn’t wanted to formulate any words until they had discussed it more fully together. Somehow, George doesn’t think either of them could’ve put it any better. 

It’s not for another couple of days that he even tries to. Still high off his win over Newcastle, buzzing too much with the relief from fear of relegation to quite bumble his way through a video call with Owen, he finally takes the moment to do what he should’ve done over a year ago. 

The shot he chooses is one he had hated that he should have loved. It’s him an Owen just seconds after the whistle had blow indicating their grand slam Six Nations win in France three ago. He’s held up in Owen’s arms, legs thrown around his waist just as haphazardly as his arms are clinging to his shoulders while the rest of their team scream and jump around them. It’s been the media’s go to shot of them ever since and George had resented it for every moment. Now he knows he never should have. For this, for them, it’s perfect. 

Underneath he writes:

_Rugby is the freedom to play the sport I love for the teams I love with the man I love._

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this on the plane when I should have been sleeping for no other reason than I felt like I should. This whole Folau situation got under my skin the first time round for obvious reasons, but it’s just so sad that it had to happen all over again. I hope he really is gone for good this time.
> 
> Anyway, I went to see Hurricanes vs Wolfpack at Chichibunomiya stadium today and it was incredible! Super Rugby is such a different experience to the English Prem I can’t even describe! The reason I’m posting this now is partly because that actually inspired me to edit this and also a little apology for not being able to post any wgw for a couple of weeks.  
> Hope it was somewhat enjoyable.


End file.
